Blog Post Archive

The pixel-peepers at DxOMark have shared some of the interesting metrics and techniques they use to judge the quality of a smartphone’s artificial bokeh, or background blur in photos. Not only is it difficult to do in the first place,...Show More Summary

A half-dozen years after launching Wikipedia Zero, The Wikimedia Foundation is sunsetting the program. Announced in 2012, it was the result of partnerships with mobile carriers, designed to waive the cost of accessing the free encyclopedia in developing countries, where data fees presented a barrier to accessing the site’s seemingly bottomless well of information. Read More

Despite a lot of backlash over a big redesign for the Snapchat app — which to be sure is a very big deal for a product-centric company like Snap — Snap CEO Evan Spiegel basically said the redesign is here to stay and people need to get used to it. Show More Summary

TechCrunch has learned of a potentially serious new bug affecting a wide range of Apple devices. During their development work on an international news feed, software engineers at Aloha Browser discovered two unicode symbols in a non-English language that can crash any Apple device that uses Apple’s default San Francisco font. Show More Summary

MIT researchers have developed a chip designed to speed up the hard work of running neural networks, while also reducing the power consumed when doing so dramatically – by up to 95 percent, in fact. The basic concept involves simplifying...Show More Summary

Things are still looking pretty bleak for Huawei’s plans to conquer the U.S. market. Earlier this week, half a dozen top members of intelligence agencies, including the FBI, CIA and NSA reaffirmed surveillance concerns about the company and fellow Chinese smartphone maker ZTE. Show More Summary

ARM doesn’t build any chips itself, but its designs are at the core of virtually every CPU in modern smartphones, cameras and IoT devices. So far, the company’s partners have shipped more than 125 billion ARM-based chips. After moving...Show More Summary

Essential knew it had a hard road ahead of it. Andy Rubin and company acknowledged as much when they launched a handset aimed at taking on the likes of Apple and Samsung. Given that the company hasn’t issued anything in the way of official numbers thus far, a new batch of numbers from IDC are the best we have to go on at the moment — and things don’t look great. Read More

The world’s largest phone show is set for Barcelona later this month, and it’s shaping up to be an interesting one — particularly in the wake of what amounted to an extremely lackluster CES last month. We’re still a couple of weeks out from the actual event, but the rumors have already started flying. Read More

Onavo Protect, the VPN client from the data-security app maker acquired by Facebook back in 2013, has now popped up in the Facebook app itself, under the new banner “Protect” in the navigation menu. Clicking through on “Protect” will redirect Facebook users to the “Onavo Protect – VPN Security” app’s listing on the App Store. We’re… Read More

Despite plenty of uncertainty swirling around Instacart and its complex relationship with Whole Foods — now owned by Amazon — investors still seem to not be too worried, and are pouring a fresh big round of financing into the startup that values it at $4.2 billion. Show More Summary

Schools are often late to taking advantage of new technologies, so today still do much of their business over paper forms. One pain point in particular – for school administrators, teachers and parents alike – is handling permission forms for activities and field trips. Show More Summary

WhatsApp has begun testing a new payments feature in India that will allow people to send money to other WhatsApp users, excluding merchant accounts. The feature is currently in beta, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans, but hasn’t been publicly announced because it’s not widely available at this time. Show More Summary

Here at TechCrunch, we cover company earnings on a pretty regular basis. And we promise it’s for a good reason: The success and failure of these publicly-traded companies tends to give us at least one more data point when it comes to calibrating which technologies are exciting to investors, as well as the trajectory of those technologies. Show More Summary

It’s been more than a year since the well-funded startup Cyanogen announced that it would shut down its mobile OS development, and since pivoted to self-driving technology. Yet we’re still seeing some fallout among the companies that...Show More Summary

Turing Robotic’s CEO says the company isn’t done. But it’s definitely hit another significant roadblock in its quest to bring some fun alternative handsets to the market. The Finnish phone maker’s story so far is one of delay after delay, and now it’s announced, via Facebook post, that it’s suspending manufacturing. CEO Syl Chao’s didn’t offer… Read More

Tinder will launch a series of new features based on location in 2018, its parent company Match Group revealed during this week’s Q4 2017 earnings. The dating app maker has been fairly vague on what these new features will entail, having...Show More Summary

Apple’s investment in AR technologies has been ushering in a new wave of apps, from those that let you perform more practical tasks – like visualizing furniture placement in rooms – to those with mass consumer appeal – like AR gaming, including Niantic’s upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. But AR can also be used to create unique experiences within more… Read More